


Ain't That A Kick In The Head

by renquise



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit from a gratuitous AU where Spy, Engineer, and Scout’s Mom go traipsing around Europe and cause a lot of grief for art collectors, Butch-Sundance-and-Etta style. Except with less getting shot up at the end. And more threesomes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't That A Kick In The Head

**Author's Note:**

> Though this stands alone, this was supposed to be the completely shameless epilogue to a TF2 heist AU where the team became con men and thieves instead of mercenaries. I don’t think I’ll ever finish the main story, so I’m letting this out into the wild on its own. Run free, porn, run free!

They tumble onto the train to Florence in a flurry of suitcases and cocktail clothes, laughing when they bump into each other in the narrow train corridors. It’s a good cover—drunken revellers back from a party—but she can’t deny that there’s a certain truth to it. There’s a girlish giddiness that rises up inside her, especially when she turns to see Spy’s artfully dishevelled smirk and Engineer’s wide grin.

It just feels so good to be back. She hasn’t felt this young in a long time.

She knows she’s good, but it’s even better to get some kind of confirmation—a priceless statuette currently nestled in a hat box, for instance.

She missed this.

It’s been awhile since she’s played the game, and slipping into the skin of her characters feels like greeting old friends: the estranged distant relation of an oil magnate, the lost heir to the Swedish throne, the ditzy actress, the nuclear scientist working on a top-secret project.

Her baby boy’s all grown up now, off doing his own cons. Last time he’d called, he was in good hands with Sniper and Demo, playing out a rag job on the west coast. Every so often, she hears through the grapevine a report about a minor, but precious artefact stolen from the Met, or a lightning-quick bank theft and thinks, that’s my boy.

She’s just as proud of her other boys—shopkeepers, lawyers, baseball players, now—but she can’t help but feel a certain fierce pride for her youngest. Maybe she shouldn’t be encouraging delinquency, but it’s good to have someone carrying on the less legal family business.

She’s got to tell him to stop leaving gloating notes for his marks, though. It’s a bit of a self-indulgent risk even when you’re an old hand at the game, and “ha ha yeah that’s right wave goodbye to your secret crap dumbass” isn’t exactly the most stylish or subtle way of going about it. There’s an exciting future ahead of him, and he can’t let himself be caught this early on in the game.

As much as people mostly know him as her son right now, she knows there’s a day where she’ll have to settle for being known as Scout’s mother. And she’ll be proud as punch when that day comes, but she can’t let him catch up to her quite that quickly.

“Y’all get settled in, I’m going to go see if I can rustle us up some drinks,” Engineer says, pulling off his dinner jacket and loosening his bowtie.

Spy waves him off. “Allow me.”

Engineer glances at him. “You just want to see if you can charm yourself a free bottle of champagne from the bar car.”

“You wound me, monsieur! I was simply wondering if the bar would be generous enough to contribute a bottle to celebrate a newly-eloped couple.”

She grins at him. “That would be awfully generous of them. Who’s the groom, now, though?”

“Take your pick, madame,” Spy says, “Would you rather elope with the Texan gentleman, or the handsome French rogue? The former is a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes, but once you get him loosened up, he’s not half bad.”

Engineer rolls his eyes as he stows away their luggage, lifting the hat box with particular care.

“It’s a bit of a hard choice, isn’t it?” She hums, as if pondering the issue. “And after all, do I have to choose?”

“Scandalous. I like it,” Spy says, stepping out the sliding door in a swoop of well-tailored tuxedo.

The conductor’s already punched their tickets, and they have the compartment and the one adjacent all to themselves.

She hums appreciatively at the sight of their compartment—all warm, rich wood and brass fixtures. There’s a part of her, a young girl growing up in rough Southie, that still marvels at the accoutrements of luxury. It reminds her of going downtown after school with her girlfriends, passing by the doorman—Billy-from-next-door’s dad—and watching him hold the door open for ladies with fur coats and perfectly curled hair, their bracelets shining against their gloves.

She’d figured out one day if she saved up and bought herself a little fur shrug, and did herself up all pretty, she could stride in the doors to the hotel with nary a glance, except for a raised eyebrow from Billy’s dad. And from there, it had been far too easy to convince lonely old gentlemen that she had lost her check book on the ship from London, and that she was terribly sorry to impose on them, but she would pay them back when her replacement check book came in the mail, of course.

It had been at a party at that hotel that she had first met Spy, though he hadn’t been calling himself by that name yet. Spy cut a fine figure at the bar—a successful-looking young man in a sleek suit, his hair roguishly tousled and his shoes shining.

They flirted and bought each other drinks and thoroughly charmed each other, until they got up to a hotel room and realized that neither of them was an impressionable English lord’s son nor a naïve Moldovian princess. (Just a boy from the outskirts of Paris, and a girl from the wrong side of town.)

After fuming a bit, they decided that they might as well go back downstairs and settle the bar tab by seeing who could pick the most wallets from the fatcats milling around the buffet table.

She won, technically, but Spy managed to get away with a truly impressive emerald-encrusted bracelet that was perhaps worth more than the contents of all the wallets put together, and they couldn’t leave it at that, really.

The only way to settle it, of course, was to determine who could return all of the wallets before anyone got suspicious. They decided that they may as well up the stakes a bit with shots of whiskey, until her “accidental” stumbles into rich businessmen’s chests got a lot less accidental. Spy caught her around the waist, his quick fingers not as nimble as usual.

They found themselves swaying together on the dance floor long after potential marks had left. When even the band was packing up their instruments and the bartender was cleaning off the bar, all soft murmurs and glasses clinking in the dim glow, they stumbled up to a room. She remembers her heels catching on the thick, plush carpet, and Spy’s hand on her arm. She took off her paste ruby necklace, and he fumbled his silver-plated cufflinks off his sleeves, and they folded themselves into the fine sheets and fell asleep.

In the morning, she finally kissed him, and proposed a collaboration.

She kicks off one of her pumps, her feet aching a bit. Gorgeous shoes, but they really weren’t made for making a quick getaway. She pushes her fingers along the arch of her foot.

Engineer comes in from the communicating compartment, looking far more comfortable out of his suit. “Aw, hey, are your feet sore?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, smiling at him, “Running around after eight boys has given me darn tough feet.”

“Did you do that in heels, too?” he says. He seems to hesitate for a moment, but then kneels down at her feet. His hand is warm and gentle around her ankle as he slips off her other shoe, setting it aside.

“Only sometimes. Some of them were too fast for that,” she says, trailing off into a sigh when Engineer rubs his thumbs into the ball of her foot, all warm, firm pressure. “You’re darn good at this, mister.”

“I used to do this for my wife, ‘fore we split up,” he says, the heel of his palm pressing along her arch. “May as well put the knowledge to good use.”

“Well, we certainly can’t have that expertise going to waste, can we?”

The swaying of the train and the steady kneading of Engineer’s fingers should be calming, but the after-con jitters are still tripping through her veins, leaving sparks when Engineer hits a spot just right. His eyebrows compress into a frown as he concentrates on working out a tense line in her calf, and she leans down to stroke the line out of his forehead. He startles slightly and looks up at her, the tips of his ears red.

She bends down and kisses him, sweet and soft. “How you got into this job with a face that blushes that easy, I don’t know, Tex.”

“Aw, I’m usually not connin’ beautiful ladies, though,” he says, ducking his head.

“See, Spy really is a bad influence on you if you’re resorting to flattery,” she says, lifting her foot out of Engineer’s touch and pushing lightly at his shoulder

“Naw, Spy would be sayin’ that it ain’t flattery if it’s true.” He places his hand on her foot, and turns his head to press a kiss to her ankle.

She’d met Engineer in Las Vegas, where he’d been collaborating with Spy. Soft-spoken, disarming, charming in a completely different way from Spy—and really quite brilliant when it came to safebreaking.

There’d been a summer in ’59, in particular, in New Orleans. A long con, with she and Spy roping the mark, and Engineer as the inside man.

She remembers late nights on the porch of their rented house, an old, dignified affair with delicate wrought-iron balconies on the second floor. They’d done it up into a proper company store, all rich and expensive-looking.

That had been a good summer. A steady crop of marks flush with riches from the war, ripe for the picking—they almost didn’t have enough time to get them all in the door. Friends drifting in and out—Sniper using the store while he was roping his own marks, Demo staying in the spare room while was planning a job of his own, even Medic and Heavy passing through and setting up a full-on wire job, a classic. Engineer had things set up just right, so that even the biggest takes didn’t need much fixing after giving them the blow-off.

She fancied herself a real artist, then. Not just a petty pick-pocket or a thief, but a full-on con artist. Sure, there were times when she was tempted to go back to working by herself, but then she would look at Spy roping a mark with a glance and Engineer laying out the convincer with precise ease and think, no, not now.

It was one of those long summers, stretching well into fall, luxuriously indolent. The three of them stayed in that house well after the glut of marks died down, pulling jobs here and there.

Even after the triplets were born, she stayed. She remembers waking up in the middle of a winter night with Spy’s arm curled around her waist, Randy’s colicky crying sharp in her ears. She remembers Engineer reaching down into the crib and shushing him, his broad hand patting slowly at Randy’s back, catching her eye and mouthing, get your sleep, darling, I’ve got it. She’d gone back to sleep, easy as that.

In all that time—two years, an eternity for any of them-- the three of them fell into bed together only once, the warmth of bourbon running under their skins. She doesn’t remember much from that night, just the laughter and the warmth of their bodies on either side of her.

In the morning, Engineer said that they—she and Spy—had a good thing, and he didn’t want to ruin a good thing, no siree. She thinks now that she should have said something. That the three of them had a good thing, not just her and Spy. But she was young, and this was complicated, and she knew she had another boy on the way. She could feel it in her belly, a warm weight of promise.

They kept in touch, even when she got out of the game for a bit to raise her boys. Gone back to Boston, the whole shebang—her mother was there, and she was able to help. Spy came by now and again, always with pop-guns in tow for the boys. He never stayed, though. He would try for a few weeks, and would even come close to getting himself a somewhat legal job, but he would always leave eventually, a note on the bedstand saying that he would be back.

And then that whole falling-out between Engineer and Spy—well, it cut things a little deep. Engineer went back to Texas, dropped off the radar for awhile until she found out he was making safes now, not breaking into them, and Spy just pulled his usual disappearing act.

Spy appeared on her doorstep with a job offer, years and years later, and she’d said no, not for her. But. Her son could continue on being a hell of a short con artist, but she figured that once he got a taste of the long con, there wouldn’t be any going back. Maybe it had been awhile, but she could still convince Spy that he wanted her youngest in her stead.

The job was all hushed up, but she put her ear to the ground and heard echoes of a hell of a job, a nine-man team, and not one, but two companies elegantly swindled out of a small fortune.

Spy came back a few months later with a diamond the size of a walnut, and it wasn't a proposal, but she said yes anyways. Yes, so long as you get a proper fence for that diamond and Engineer comes too.

Spy laughed sheepishly and said, hey, why not.

She hears the door shut quietly, and looks over her shoulder at Spy, bottle in one hand and champagne flutes dangling from the other.

“Speak of the devil,” she says, shooting a smile at him.

“Mon dieu, I see you’ve started without me. You’ll have to catch me up,” he says, grinning back. Spy kisses her, fond and playful, and then bends down, cupping his hand along the firm line of Engineer’s jaw and brushing his lips against his. “Mind if I cut in?”

“Be my guest.” Engineer straightens and settles behind her on the bed, his arms wrapped around her waist and his mouth on her shoulder.

Spy kneels down at her feet, lifting his coat out of the way like a pianist at his bench. He strokes his hands up her leg, kissing the join of her knee. Smooth as always, he unclips her stocking, trailing his fingers down as he slips his fingers into the silk and rolls it down slowly, savouring every inch.

Spy does the same for her other stocking, rolling it down delicately, and she feels the bed settle behind her. Engineer’s fingers pause at the nape of her neck, tracing over the zipper of her cocktail dress.

“May I?” he asks, polite as always.

“Knock yourself out, Tex,” she breathes, and she feels him sliding the zipper down and kissing the exposed skin of her back.

Her dress is all hiked up around her hips, and it’s probably going to wrinkle horribly, but she can’t bring herself to care. Spy traces his mouth up her leg, pushing up the edge of her girdle and pressing his lips to her panties before slipping them aside. She can feel Engineer at her back, his hands slipping into her dress.

She somehow struggles out of her dress and back between the two of them, and, oh, Engineer slips one, two fingers inside her. She hears him echo her gasp as Spy’s tongue flickers around them.

She’s caught between Engineer’s warm, broad hands and Spy’s clever tongue, arching up into their touch. She’s all worked up, and it’s just lovely—it’s just a matter of minutes before that slow, rolling shiver rolls up her body.

Spy knows her well enough to tell when she gets oversensitive—she pushes lightly at his shoulder, shivering as he licks over her one last time.

Engineer leans down to kiss him, all soft, slick sounds in the dim light of the compartment, town lights flashing by the window and casting shadows across their faces. She knows that Engineer can surely taste her on Spy’s mouth.

Spy nudges between Engineer’s legs, a hand high on Engineer’s thigh. Engineer’s throat shifts in a long swallow.

“Ain’t your mouth tired?” Engineer says, his voice soft and hoarse with arousal. His hand combs back through Spy’s hair, belying his words. Spy doesn’t respond, but butts his head into Engineer’s hand, and Engineer trails his fingers down over Spy’s lips. She sees Spy’s tongue curl around them, sucking them into his mouth.

“Shh, he likes it,” she translates, unnecessarily. And he does, she knows—loves the power of making someone come apart under his mouth just as much as he loves talking someone out of their valuable belongings. Spy’s lips curl into a smile around Engineer’s calloused fingers, and she hears Engineer gasp.

“Spy—Spy, hold up, I’m—“ Engineer pants, and Spy pulls off, surging up into Engineer’s lap and kissing him hard, the line of his cock evident in his tailored pants.

“Not yet, I think?” Spy says, his voice lovely and rough.

“No, not quite,” she agrees, and kisses Engineer’s cheek as Engineer takes a steadying, shuddery breath.

Engineer pulls Spy up onto the bed, tugging at his starched collar and scattering jacket, cummerbund, pants on the floor with her help. It’s probably a measure of how much Spy wants this that he doesn’t complain about wrinkling his clothes.

It had taken a few weeks for her and Spy to convince Engineer that this was a good idea—that she and Spy together were good, but the three of them together were better. For all his amazing ingenuity, the man was a little dense when it came to some things.

She knows Spy well enough to know that the chase had been part of the appeal, really. After all, if people just left their Faberges and Michelangelos out for any two-bit thief to take, it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

Like any job, they laid out the proper groundwork—light touches and low, murmured words. Feeling out the territory. Spy's hand low on Engineer's back as he leaned in to whisper in his ear while Engineer carefully disarmed the alarm system around the Vermeer. Her body tucked against Engineer's back and her hands around his waist as they waited in an alcove for a guard to pass.

It was clear, so clear that Engineer wanted this as much as they did—there was no mistaking the hungry, dark look in Engineer’s eyes at times. Engineer was a good-natured gentleman, but he was also a thief—and one used to getting what he wanted. Especially when it was sitting just out of his reach.

Finally, it took a purloined Rembrandt and a particularly fine scotch to convince him. A little expensive, perhaps, but she’d done far harder jobs for a far less valuable payout.

As she arranged herself on Spy, letting her negligee part just so over her leg, she couldn’t help but laugh a bit. It just reminded her of so many other occasions with Spy where they’d created the perfect tableau of infidelity, lust, ravishment—whatever the job needed. Younger days, both of them still a little unpracticed, her persistent Boston accent showing through when she was impersonating Swedish princesses, and Spy’s disguise skills not quite up to scratch yet. (The false beard had been a particularly terrible idea, though it had seemed inspired at the time.)

This was simultaneously simpler and more complicated than that. When they had finally arranged themselves to her liking, Spy ran a hand through her hair on the pretext of fixing a stray curl, saying, “Mon dieu, he might just decide to be infuriatingly gentleman-like and walk straight back out, apologizing for intruding.”

If she hadn’t known better, he’d sounded almost nervous.

There were many things she’d thought about saying in return. A quip saying that she didn't think her legs are that bad-looking, even if she was getting on in years. A contingency plan to go after Engineer if he leaves. An assurance that they were all professional enough to make cons work even if this went down in flames.

In the end, she just said, “He won’t.”

It didn't go exactly as planned, but it was close enough to work.

Engineer pulls Spy back against his chest, the long line of Spy’s body against his. They’re a study in contrasts, Spy all long limbs and sleek muscle, Engineer with his broad chest and strong arms. She almost feels a little selfish, having both to herself, but she can’t help herself. Engineer catches her eye when he wraps his hand around Spy’s cock, making Spy’s hips buck up into his hand.

She scoots closer to Spy, catching his lips in a quick kiss and pulling back, leaving him reaching for more. Her legs coil loosely around Spy’s, and she’s close enough to feel Engineer’s knuckles rub against her belly, and lower, as his hand shifts.

“What next?” Spy breathes against her neck, his voice hitching when Engineer gives him a firm stroke. “You’re the one that picked Florence, after all.”

“Well, what would you think of the Uffizi? I hear it’s got a few Caravaggios that are really pretty nice.”

Engineer raises an eyebrow. “Art again? Got to say, I always remember you being a bit more practical than that.”

She smiles at him. “That what we’ve got you here for, right? To stop certain people—“ She gives Spy a quick, hard kiss. “—From going off on flights of fancy and ill-advised romantic thievery.”

She reaches into her purse for a condom while Spy’s distracted by Engineer’s hands, his eyes closed and his breath coming in gasps against Engineer’s cheek. In a few quick movements, she’s rolling it down, and then guiding Spy inside her, meeting Engineer’s hand on Spy’s cock. Engineer’s fingers slide to her clit as she sinks down, pulling a low noise out of her, and oh, she just feels warm and loose-limbed, slowly rocking against Spy and licking a vibrating moan out of his mouth.

“From what I’ve heard, the security’s tighter than—well, it’s tight,” Spy says with a laugh, and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re hilarious, dear.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to avoid tripping it off, won’t we?” Engineer says, moving impossibly closer. “I’m sure a smart guy like you has an idea.”

Spy smirks. “I may have an idea or two. We’ll just have to go on a busy day—make sure we can create a distraction. The upcoming gala will do.”

“Go on, dear, don’t mind me,” she says, kissing him again. “So, you’ll be able to get it off the wall with no problem, if we time it well enough.”

“And once we’ve gotten it off the wall—well, it’s just a matter of—oh mon dieu—“

“A matter of?” she says, and her voice is a lot more breathless than she anticipated. She squeezes lightly around him, relishing that feeling of fullness, and hears him gasp, desperate and wanting. “You can’t leave me hanging like that, hon.”

For a moment, it seems like he won’t answer, his mouth moving soundlessly. She realizes that Engineer’s managed to tear himself away long enough to grab the lotion in her handbag—and that he just pushed a finger into Spy, slow but insistent. She feels Spy’s hands tighten briefly in her hair before he takes a deep breath and loosens them with a soft apology.

“Mes excuses. Then—then, it’s just a matter of smuggling the painting out of the museum, and that’s what you’re there for, ma cherie,” he says, tapering off into a moan that he muffles in Engineer’s mouth.

“Well, it doesn’t sound like a half bad plan. Needs a bit more elaboration, but it’ll do for now. What do you think, Engie?”

Engineer chuckles, kissing a line along Spy’s shoulder. “If you’re in, then I’m darn well in.”

“No, you aren’t, which is quite the shame,” Spy says, rocking back onto Engineer’s fingers emphatically.

Engineer chuckles, slightly breathless. “Well, if you insist.”

Spy goes very still against her, taking in a sharp breath—she feels the muscles in his thigh tremble slightly against her leg. Engineer’s low moan sends a pulse of warmth down her body, twisting in her belly. She’s tempted to lean forward and to kiss them—either of them, both of them—but she holds back. It’s strange and wonderful to see such an open expression on Spy, his eyes squeezed closed and his lips parted.

She slips her hand back around Spy, dipping lower, and oh. Oh, she can feel Engineer pushing into Spy, hot and steady, Spy’s body accommodating him. Her hand joins Engineer’s at Spy’s hip, steadying all three of them for a moment.

It takes a few tries to get a rhythm that works, but there’s a gentle, rolling rhythm to the train that works pretty well.

It takes her by surprise—Spy thrusts up into her and Engineer presses hard at her clit (she’s never been so glad for his motor skills), and she comes again in a slow, rolling pulse. When she opens her eyes, Spy has that soft, unguarded look to him, the kind she doesn’t see often.

“Come on, boys, let me see you,” she whispers, kissing each of them in turn and feeling Engineer’s thrusts echoed inside her. They don’t last much longer—it just takes a few more thrusts before they both collapse back, limbs loose.

She reaches over the side of the bed eventually for the bottle of champagne. It wasn’t perfectly chilled anymore, but it would definitely do. “Come on, handsome. Wouldn’t want the fruits of your hard work to go to waste. ” She pokes at Spy’s stomach, who squirms away from her finger. “One day you’ll be an old geezer and you won’t be able to charm yourself a fancy drink so easily.”

“You wound, ma chère. I like to think that I’ll be able to get myself a drink or two even when I am old and fat.”

Engineer chuckles. “You’ll be the scandal of every town, seducin’ young impressionable things and such, god knows how.”

Spy twists the cork out of the champagne bottle with a neat pop, handing a flute to both of them and pouring it off with a flourish. He reaches for his own flute, saying, “A toast, I think.”

“To comfortable train beds and dense museum guards,” she says, an utterly frivolous toast if there ever was one. But that’s okay, somehow. A little frivolity never hurt anyone. Besides, “to us” would have been far too obvious.

The bubbles trip beautifully on her tongue and down her throat when she tips her head back and takes a long swallow. Not particularly elegant, but she doesn’t have to be for the moment.

It’s so utterly decadent, she thinks as she twirls the thin stem of the flute in her fingers, leaning into Spy’s warm chest and idly petting Engineer’s thigh. She’s never really been one to go for the purely aesthetic, but maybe she’s getting soft in her old age. Besides, she likes to think that she deserves it.

As the champagne catches up to her, she leans back onto the bed, Spy plastered to her back and Engineer with his arms wrapped around her, his hand slung over her shoulder and lightly touching Spy’s arm. When it becomes apparent that none of them have any intention of getting back up, she wriggles down to catch the sheets and pull them up, almost elbowing Spy in the face in the process.

There’s the practical side of her that says that this can’t last forever. Sooner or later, they’ll get caught, or they’ll just—fall apart, their little unit disassembling itself as easily as it had formed.

But right here, now, this feels right, and she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Over Engineer’s shoulder, she watches the dark countryside flash by, the moonlight dimming when clouds pass overhead. The train makes a steady clacking over the tracks, metronome-like. Tomorrow they’ll wake in Naples, the rough Italian countryside shining gold in the sun.

The train bed is far too small for two people, let alone three, but they manage.


End file.
